Author: Center for Services Leadership

How Customer Participation in B2B Peer-to-Peer Problem Solving Communities Influences the Need for Traditional Customer Service

By Sterling Bone Can peer-to-peer interactions in a customer support community reduce the need for one-on-one traditional customer support service? New research sponsored by Arizona State’s Center for Services Leadership and published in the Journal of Service Research (JSR) attempts to address this question. Firms that leverage the collective wisdom and knowledge in their customer …

Development of New B2B Solutions: Results of a Benchmarking Survey

Earlier this year Solutions Insights Inc. conducted a benchmarking survey designed to better understand the issues that B2B companies face in developing new solutions. The survey explored the following questions: •    Current importance and relevance of solutions •    Identification of the stakeholders who are involved •    Key processes required •    The level of process standardization …

Using Text Mining for Customer Feedback

Great to see new research that’s happening on the intersection of multiple disciplines. With large amounts of data that companies are accumulating through various communication channels, finding new methods and metrics for timely and accurate analysis is becoming more and more critical. This research tested a new framework that allows to automate the analysis of …

Managing the Customer Portfolio to Improve Service and Financial Performance

By Beth Walker and Crina Tarasi Few firms consider “whether all of their individually desirable customers are, from the standpoint of risk, desirable collectively” (Dhar and Glazer 2003). Dr. Beth Walker, Arizona State University, and Dr. Crina Tarasi, Central Michigan University, present the findings of two papers that highlight the importance of considering the likely …

Extended Service Warranties: Why Are They Purchased?

By: Rajiv K. Sinha Warranties have traditionally been used as a means to signal to potential customers that the product is high-quality and to allay customers’ anxiety over purchasing a new product of unknown reliability. However, given large increases in reliability as well as the level of commoditization in consumer electronics markets, the value of …

Quid Pro Quo: Free Online Services in Exchange for User Data

By Dr. Florian v. Wangenheim We all enjoy using Internet services for free: communities, news websites and other web services often do not charge their users. In order to survive, free sites depend on advertising revenues. These can be increased through behavioral targeting, in which the advertiser makes use of information that he has about the …

Providing a #WinningExperience for the Digital Customer

By Bobbi Dangerfield @BobbiAtDell Michael Dell, said it best: “We’re a company with big ears” – a good thing considering there are more than 25,000 online conversations about Dell each day in English. While that number can be overwhelming, it underscores the wonderful opportunity social media offers for companies to listen, engage, and ultimately understand …

Changing Customer Behavior- Is it possible?

By: Per Kristensson During the past decade, customers have displayed overwhelmingly positive attitudes toward environmentally-friendly offerings. However, their actual behavior does not mirror these attitudes. Do you think it would be possible to change customer behavior to make them greener? In a market research study carried out in the U.S., 67% of surveyed respondents claimed …